I usually sleep like Rip Van Winkle. That didn't happen on the first night of 2013. I thought maybe the house was too warm, or I'd eaten too late. Or perhaps I'd gone to bed too early for New Year's Eve. I wasn't sure what kept my eyes open and my brain charged.
Getting up past midnight, I wandered over to the window. Looked out at the breast of the old-fallen snow, hoping for a glimpse of the deer that sometimes visit the backyard in deep winter.
No deer, but as I stood staring at the snow-covered yard and the open fields behind it, an image came to mind: someone walking in the snow. A man, it seemed. I shook my head. No, he wasn't really there at all. What would make me imagine that?
I went back to bed.
Sometime later I heard the whine of a high-powered snowmobile. It tracked back and forth - many times - on the street bordering that field, the one running parallel to the railroad tracks at the edge of town. The machine's whine sounded urgent, as though its driver had some critical night mission and didn't care who he woke. New Year's revelers, I imagined.
The Holy Spirit sends us all holy nudges, gentle at times, and not so at others. I've missed some, but when I felt nudged to pray that night, I considered three unusual things: my sleeplessness, the mental image of a lone man walking and the snowmobile, and whispered a brief prayer. "Lord, I don't know what's going on out there. Please take care of it and whoever's out there." Then I went back to bed.
Sleep evaded me. Good thing too, because when the phone rang, I didn't have to get up and stumble and fumble. For reasons I can't recall, I'd taken the cordless to my bedside chair the night before. Now, all I had to do was grab it.
I did so with more than a little caution. A ringing phone at 3 a.m. or thereabouts seldom brings cheerful news. I sensed immediately that this call would have something to do with the trio of odd happenings.
It did indeed. My daughter's voice explained that a young visitor to our community had gone missing a few hours ago, after sending a sobering text to a friend. The fire department, police, and local volunteers (including our son-in-law, Kendall) had been summoned to search.
The call was eerily similar to another call just over a year ago. Another missing person, a senior this time. He'd simply gone for a walk and never returned. That hunt had not ended well: Kendall had discovered George; cradled him in his arms in the last moments of his life.
This story had a happier ending. Within an hour of that call, the lost boy was found alive.
I've wondered since how many people God woke to pray that night - and what would have happened if we'd refused.
